So I made myself wait, squelching the intense urge to say, “Forget it,” and walk away.
Malachi gave a heavy sigh. “All right. He did me a favor once. I suppose I owe you the same.”
Guilt and relief competed for priority, with relief winning out only by a slight margin. “Thanks,” I said.
He stepped down from the van. “Five minutes. That’s it.”
The back room in Malachi’s storefront was decidedly utilitarian and boring, not at all what I’d expected. Walking through the door, I saw a small kitchen/storage area to the right and a tiny bathroom to the left. The main area, where’d Malachi had obviously performed his spirit “consultations,” was a wood-paneled room with cheap white shelving lining the walls and a table and chairs in the center.
There were signs, though, that the decor had once been more exotic, or at least aimed to be. Puddles of purple candle wax stained almost every square inch of the shelving. The metal curtain rod that hung behind the door to the waiting room still held a strand or two of dark beads.
“Crystal ball is already in the van,” Malachi said from behind me, as if all too aware of how mundane the space appeared now.
I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.
He pushed past me and dragged a chair away from the table and gestured for me to sit in it. “Ask. Let’s go.”
He hadn’t been joking about the five-minutes thing, evidently.
“Uh, okay.” I sat down, even though his nervous/twitchy energy was enough to make me want to pace instead. “When I was here the other day, you had me fooled. I would have sworn you were a fake. It was like you didn’t even hear or see the ghosts in the waiting room. Where did you learn to do that? To tune them out like that?”
He gave me a tight smile. “I’m not sure that’s something I can teach.”
“Seriously, you’re going to pull this ‘it’s a trade secret’ bullshit on me? This is my life. I’m just trying to survive.” Before he could respond, I pushed further, struck by a sudden idea. “Is it something Erin does?” She was powerful beyond anything I’d ever seen.
He paled. “Erin. You talked to her?”
Uh-oh.Maybe not the best idea to bring up disloyal spirit guides when I was trying to get the guy’s help. “Yeah, she came to see me, but—”
He stalked forward until he was right in front of my chair. “What did she say? Did she claim you?” He leaned over me, suddenly much too close.
Whoa. He’d gone from zero to crazy intense in the space of a few seconds.
I shifted away from him. “Look, I didn’t say yes or anything.” Not that it had mattered. But whatever; Malachi didn’t need to know that. “She was just—”
“You said no?” he asked in disbelief. “Did that stop her?”
My head was spinning, trying to keep up with this conversation. “Uh, no. But it didn’t work. I think the bond with my spirit guide might somehow still be active, even though she’s not exactly here anymore.” That was the only explanation I’d come up with that made any kind of sense.
He laughed, too loud and long. “It didn’t work?” He straightened up and raked his hands through his hair. “Of course not. The first one strong enough to tempt her, and it didn’t work. Unbelievable.” He dropped to his knees, as though his legs wouldn’t support him further, and rubbed his forehead as if he were in pain.
“Are you okay?” I asked cautiously.
“I’m great. Can’t you tell?” he snapped, his face still in his hands.
Okaaay, then.He wouldn’t be the first ghost-talker to have lost possession of his marbles.
Fighting disappointment, I looked past him toward the door. I could make a run for it, no problem. But that would be the end of this conversation, and any future conversation with him, guaranteed. I wouldn’t get this opportunity again. And the answers I wanted might be here, just buried under a few layers of whack job.
“Did you want it to? Work, I mean?” I asked carefully, digging a little to piece together what was going on without making him completely flip out. If Erin was the source of his ability to control what he heard/saw, why would he want to get rid of her? Yeah, she seemed to have that same attitude problem Alona occasionally had, but it would be worth it for the kind of peace he appeared to have.
He looked up at me, dark circles under his eyes clearly visible for the first time. “For the last five years I’ve been haunted every single waking minute of every day,” he said, and laughed, but it sounded weak and sad. “Hell, for that matter, sometimes she wakes me up.”
“I don’t understand.” Which was a massive understatement.
He stood up abruptly, pulled out the chair next to mine, and sat in it, leaning toward me. “You want to know how I ignore all those other ghosts? The ones you said were in the waiting room?”
Given the strange, almost fevered expression on his face, I wasn’t so sure I did want to know anymore. But I was in it too deeply already.
I nodded.
“I don’t. I can’t see them.”
It took me a second to catch on. “You mean you can only hear them.” It wouldn’t be all that surprising, given what I’d learned from Mina. There were varying levels of ability among ghost-talkers. Even Mina herself had trouble tracking ghosts when they moved.
“No,” he said with exaggerated patience. “I mean, I can’t see them, hear them, or even tell they’re there.”
I frowned. “I don’t—”
“I can only see and hear one ghost.” He held up a finger to illustrate his point. “That is, if I’m not completely crazy, which is always a possibility.” He threw his hands up. “Maybe this is all part of one giant hallucination. Maybe I’m lying somewhere in a drug-induced coma, and this is all in my mind.” He sighed and then shook his head. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” he asked, more to himself than me.
I gaped at him.
Malachi noticed before I could recover myself. “Happy now?” he asked. “Got all the answers you want?”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“If it’s any consolation, that’s pretty much the reaction the other guy—your dad, I guess—had, too.”
“You’re talking about Erin?” I asked, to be sure.
“The one and only,” he said with a bitter smile.
That wasn’t possible. You either had the gift or you didn’t, with varying degrees in between. It wasn’t localized to specific ghosts. It couldn’t be. It would be like being able to smell only one scent or see one color. “Well, she’s not a hallucination,” I said. “I can tell you that much. I’ve seen her, too.”
He just looked at me. “Reassurance from someone else who might be a hallucination doesn’t really help.”
I opened my mouth and closed it before trying again. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.” I was starting to think he might not be crazy; crazy people don’t usually bother to question their own sanity. “Has it always been this way? When did you start seeing her?” Maybe he’d suffered some kind of traumatic brain injury or something. That might explain why he could see only one ghost…or why he thought he might be hallucinating.
“What’s the point?” He laughed. “You’re going to help me? You came to mefor help.”
“Just…start talking,” I persisted. If there was ever anyone who could have been helped by the Order and their tactics, it would have been this guy. But he’d clearly been afraid of them tracking him down, even running from me when he’d thought I was one of them. So my curiosity was going to get the better of me on this one. And who knew, maybe I could help him. He looked like he needed it.
He sagged back in his chair. “I don’t…Everything was fine until Erin died.”